Of course, back then, we’d never dreamed that we’d be conversing, ghost-to-person, about how Suze’s life had started circling the drain, putting her in a different existence than she’d ever imagined. Same, same, right?
It wasn’t easy to hear her story. After I’d gone missing, she’d spent a long time going door-to-door with flyers, launching a grassroots campaign in San Diego County to find me. Beaten down by its failure, Suze had sunk into a funk, losing her job at the bank because she’d become undependable. Then she’d met Prince Charming in a dive bar and life had gotten worse from there. He’d hidden his cheating for years, and after she’d found out about it, she hadn’t even been able to conjure enough emotion to care.
She’d let him go and had gotten a job she could take or leave bartending here at Flaherty’s, where career advancement was capped by a pine-wooded ceiling.
She was just telling me about what a chit the bartender on duty was when I sensed a flow of energy seeping into the room. When Randy appeared to me, not bothering to materialize for Suze’s sake, I knew by his expression that something was going down on his watch.
“Is Gavin here?” I asked him.
He nodded, but after I’d said the name, Suze had stood from the spot she’d taken on the floor and begun smoothing back her hair and wiping under her eyes for any stray mascara. My head almost exploded when I saw the look on her face. A turbo blush, a sparkle in her eyes as she straightened her apron.
Whoa. She looked years younger and . . . excited?
“I was out of it last night,” she said on a breath, “but I remember we touched on Gavin. Then you left. We never did talk about him beyond that.”
We hadn’t gotten around to chatting about him tonight, either. “You don’t find it strange that he’s here asking questions about me?”
“He was doing research for that reunion he’s hosting for his parents, and he wanted to know more about what happened to you.”
No, not fishy at all. I wanted to tell to Suze to stay frosty with him, but that’d be great advice coming from me, since I was practically humming with his life force, even a room away.
Hell, she was humming, too. But didn’t she at least feel weird about the age difference between them? He had to be about twenty years younger. I just hoped she wasn’t setting herself up for a disappointment when he never came back after he’d gotten what he wanted from her.
“Suze,” I said. “Do you mind if I listen in on your conversation with him since he’s looking into me?”
“Sure. Why not?” She sent me an impish smile. “I’d want to hang around him, too, if he was here to talk about me.”
I laughed, but it wasn’t because I found this amusing. “Just don’t tell him I’m around, okay?”
“That won’t be a problem. Ghosts make some people uncomfortable.”
She smiled at me, walking right past invisible Randy, and his gaze stayed glued to her until she walked out the door. Then he inspected me.
“I hate to say it,” he slurred, “but Twyla was right when she tol’ us ya want Gavin for yourself.”
“Not true.”
“Jus’ look at ya. Ya look like someone ripped a lollipop outta your hand ’n’ ran off with it.”
“Right, Randy.” I flew toward the door Suze had left open. “I wouldn’t take Twyla as an authority on anything.”
“Maybe jus’ this.”
I left him in my dust, dematerializing and returning to the main room, where the TVs silently featured men in sports jackets moving their mouths as baseball scores flashed by on the bottoms of the screens. Irish music lulled over the speakers, softer than normal, seeing as the room was only a few people shy of being empty.
The only customer I really saw, though, was at the bar, his shoulders stretching the white linen of his button down, his light brown hair nearly golden under the low illumination from the strategically placed lanterns on the walls.
Suze told the bartender to start closing up, and after she greeted Gavin, telling him that he was just in time for last call, they lapsed into how-ya-doing talk. I hung back, reading his body language. He leaned his forearms on the bar, his shoulders lacking that steel-beam tension I’d seen on him so many times. And when Suze said something I didn’t catch, I knew it was funny, because he laughed.
How often did he do that when I was around?
In the mirror in back of the liquor shelves, I saw his smile, meltingly gorgeous, transforming him from taciturn to . . . Would bright be accurate? Because his eyes got these lines that rayed out from them. And he kept smiling at Suze, just like . . .
He was attracted to her?
I would’ve used some empathy on him, but he was onto my ghost tricks, and he would’ve known, maybe even blocking me out. Even so, my instincts shivered. Was he playing her so that he could get information about me? Or was that smile genuine?
Something small and petty inside me screamed, Protect your friend. Gavin has killed, and you don’t want Suze near him.
But it could be that I was just full of shit, since I very well knew that he’d killed for good reason. This was more about me and my warped connection with him.
Randy was reclining on the very top of the liquor shelves, all ears as he eavesdropped on Gavin and Suze. I should’ve been just as tuned in as he was, but I hesitated to get too close. I didn’t want to listen in as this obvious chemistry cooked between them. Besides, if I got too close, what would I do? Push Suze away from him like I was some sort of demented, jealous poltergeist?
As I collected myself, a strange sensation took hold of me: my body, solidifying. Becoming a body.
I looked behind me to a booth, and lo and behold, what the hell was sitting there? Fake Dean, stretched out over the bench, one knee up with his arm resting on it and hanging over his shin. His back was against the wall as he worked a toothpick in his mouth.
“Heard this was the greatest show in town,” he said in that lazy way that made me want to smack him. And do other things to him that’d I’d done only with my real Dean.
I coolly turned back around. Figured he would show up during this incredibly awkward situation. The guy had major Jensen radar.
I checked to see if Suze and Gavin noticed that he’d appeared, or that I had a body now. Was I visible? It didn’t seem that way. When I peered in the long mirror over the bar, there wasn’t an image there, either.
But Randy was sure staring at me like I was somehow different. And as he eyed Dean behind me, he straightened up on his perch, like a bantam rooster getting ready to dart down for an attack.
I shook my head at him. Yes, this is the pseudo-wrangler I told you about, but it’s cool. For now.
Randy would have to monitor Suze and Gavin while I took care of this more pressing situation, so I fixed my attention back on fake Dean, who jerked his chin to the other side of the booth, inviting me in.
Like that was going to happen.
He went a step farther, transforming into another identity, a trick he’d pulled on me before.
This time, he impersonated Gavin, with the button-down, jeans, work boots, and a cold smile just for me.
“Cut it out,” I said.
“Or would you prefer . . .” He switched into James Dean, in a black jacket, T-shirt, cuffed jeans, greased blond hair, and a burning who-cares attitude.
Still, it wasn’t enough to lure me in. “I won’t waste my time asking what you’re doing here, star boy.”
“Why don’t you waste your time asking me why Gavin or Suze can’t see you right now instead? Because you were wondering. Don’t lie.”
“Asking would be just as useless.”
Yup, he was as entertained by me as always. “I’ll remind you that you are a ghost, darlin’. Normal people do not see ghosts.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m in second grade.”
He took the toothpick out of his mouth. “Why, oh why, do you feel like you have a body when there’s none to be seen?”
Rhetorical que
stion. Might as well play along. “Because you have great influence over my state of being, blah-blah-blah. I am how you want me to be—invisible, like I am when I go into human dreams, but solid. The best of both worlds.”
“See,” he said with that smile. “You’re far beyond second-grade reasoning, Jenny. But you forgot one part.”
God. “What?”
“You’re this way because it’s the way I want it. And what I want, I get.”
As a combination of hot thrills and cool guardedness ruled me, his gaze went to Gavin and Suze. When he smiled even wider, I couldn’t help but give in to my curiosity and see what he was seeing.
For the second time that night, my head almost exploded when I took in the sight of Suze leaning on the bar toward Gavin, both of them laughing.
I expected fake Dean to chuckle, but when I didn’t hear it, I wondered why. I found him with a serious look on his face, snapping the toothpick between two fingers.
It felt like the snap that had just happened inside me.
“They move on,” he said. “None of us are real to them, even if you spend the energy to materialize and seem real. Suze will always love the memory of you, but when a stud like Gavin comes walking in, paying attention to her in a way that she hasn’t had it paid for years, how do you think she’s going to react?”
Just like this, I thought as I looked back at them. Suze’s blush made her face glow, even if she’d seemed so drawn only an hour ago. I wanted to tell her to watch out, that Gavin had ulterior motives—namely, to get to the bottom of his fascination with me.
I couldn’t just stand here anymore, so I walked toward the bar with my Dean-enhanced body, then climbed onto it, sitting Indian style and facing them. I tried not to get so near that Gavin would recognize my coldness and energy—if I was still emanating it with this sort-of body. Bottom line, though? I wasn’t about to let Gavin take his obsession with me to this level, roping in my down-on-her-heels friend Suze.
From the booth, fake Dean’s low laugh rang across the room, even though I was sure no one but me and Randy heard it.
16
Gavin had obviously made a sobering comment to Suze before I plunked onto the bar. I could tell because her smile had already gentled into that understanding expression she got whenever I used to come to her for sympathy.
“Why’d you get kicked out of the house tonight?” Suze asked.
Ah. This was about Wendy.
“It’s my younger sister,” Gavin said. “We had an . . . emotional discussion. She needed some space.”
So Wendy hadn’t handled the news of the dark spirit possibly being her asshole father very well. At least Scott was still around for her to pour her soul out to. But even that didn’t make me terribly comfortable.
“So it’s your sister you argued with, huh?” Suze asked.
Gavin grinned. Did he know that Suze was fishing for information about a wife or girlfriend?
“I have to tell you,” she said, “I wish I had a dime for everyone who came in here saying that they’d been kicked out of their homes and they stopped in to have a drink until things cooled off.”
Gavin reached into his back pocket and tossed his fancy leather wallet on the bar, reverting to Mr. Nonchalant Attitude. “You know how suffocating big brothers can be when you’re a kid. She hates me right now for not telling her the whole truth about something. I wanted to hang around, just in case she wanted a shoulder to lean on, but”—he chuffed—“turns out she’s got that.”
Yup, Scott.
“I never had a big brother, or sister. I would’ve loved either one.” Suze backed away from the bar, reaching behind her for some whiskey, vermouth, and bitters. Maybe Gavin had already ordered a drink. Maybe she already knew what he liked. “Hopefully, when you get home, your sis will be asleep, and she’ll wake up in the morning ready to talk things out. Then she’ll realize how lucky she is.”
“She’ll have to face me again sometime.”
As Suze poured the makings of what I knew was a Manhattan, she lifted her big blue gaze to him. I was torn between congratulating her for having such confidence with a younger guy like Gavin—just like the go-get-’em cheerleader Suze I’d known—and wanting her to be more leery of him.
After she garnished his cocktail with a maraschino cherry, she sent him a shy smile, and he returned it. In back of me, I heard someone clear his throat.
I didn’t acknowledge fake Dean because he was only being a too-observant jerk.
Gavin threw some of his drink down the hatch, his throat working with a swallow. Then he said, “It’s been a hell of a couple of months in general. Wish I’d found this place a lot sooner.”
“So you could drink your cares away? I don’t recommend that fix.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He kept his hand on the half-empty glass, his fingers long and sturdy. The hands of a real man who worked for his money, not the kind of rich fraternity cornball he could’ve been. “Sometimes it’s nice to have someplace to go to watch a game or to listen to music.”
“You’re welcome here anytime.”
Gavin’s smile was easygoing. It was so simple for Suze to bring that out in him.
Something inside me compressed, building into a frustrating pressure.
The last customers at the bar beckoned her, wanting to cash out, but she was back soon, her skin flushed again. “And how’s that reunion of yours going?”
“Right. The reunion.” He toyed with his glass. “It’s going. But I’ve gotten sidetracked by all this Jensen Murphy stuff.”
In back of me, I could hear fake Dean mutter, “What a smooth operator.”
I hated that he was right. But since Suze knew I was still in the pub, I was sure she wouldn’t give away too much about her old friend, even if she didn’t realize the true reason Gavin was looking into me.
She leaned on the bar again. The apron didn’t hide some impressive cleavage, even for a woman over fifty. Dang, Suze.
“Your interest in Jensen seems to have gone beyond a reunion story,” she said.
He leaned a little closer, too. “Just call me curious.”
They grinned at each other, and I almost reached forward to brace my arms against both of them, pushing them apart. Above me, Randy floated down from the shelves.
“I can handle this, Jen.”
“I’m fine.”
From the booth, fake Dean put in his two cents. “Jenny, why in the hell are you putting yourself through this?”
There was such concern in his tone that I couldn’t help taking a peek at him: my first love, blond and young and eternal. My first disappointment, but not the last.
My very own facsimile of what used to be.
Gavin asked, “When I read those old newspaper articles about Jensen, it just seemed like there was much more to her than a bunch of words on a page. I tried to track down any family she had left, to see if there’d been any developments on finding her over the years, but no luck there.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “I’m sure everybody at the reunion would love to have closure of some sort.”
“Closure would’ve been nice.” A lost curl hung near Suze’s cheek. “I get so mad when I see those articles about her. It’s as if she became a story, an idea, something that kids tell each other at bonfire parties. But Jen was so much more than that. Her last picture only shows one side of her when there were so many more.”
“I’ve seen other photos. She was really the girl next door, wasn’t she?”
And the ghost who’d camped out in his own room when she was haunting him, I thought.
“Right,” Suze said. “The girl next door to Animal House.”
They laughed together, and I thought I saw a gleam in Gavin’s light blue eyes. Was it because of his interest in me? Or was it because he’d finally found someone to share his so-called obsession with?
“I shouldn’t say that.” Suze tucked that curl behind her ear. “Jen was a sweet girl in school. Not so goody-goody that she
was a nerd, but she was someone other kids looked up to. She was on the volleyball team, so the jocks liked her. She led the student council, so that got her the smart kid vote of confidence. And she hung out at the beach whenever she could, sunbathing and surfing, so she had the cool factor going. She used to like how carrying that short board got her more male attention than lipstick or nail polish ever could.”
Suze was waxing so everyman-poetic about me that I couldn’t stand to hear the bad parts. And I knew they’d be coming up, because after my parents had died I’d changed.
I’d almost forgotten that fake Dean was still around, because when I climbed off the bar, shutting out the murmur of the rest of their conversation, he was standing right in back of Gavin, giving me the chance to see them side by side: one man strung so tightly together by muscle and relaxed tension that it almost seemed like he was going to break after he left this bar. One man loose and carefree, sunny and nearly always smiling like he had a secret he wanted to tell you.
Fake Dean must’ve felt my emotions, because he sure put them into words.
“Stop torturing yourself,” he said, his light brown eyes strangely tender.
“I’m beginning to think that’s good advice.” So I signaled Randy that I was leaving the pub, and he nodded, taking my place on the bar, a cross-legged sailor with his chin resting on a fist as he monitored Suze and Gavin, who both shifted as if they’d goose bumped with the sudden cold.
I decided that I’d just see Suze another time, when she wasn’t so occupied. Meanwhile, there was a whole lot to occupy me, right? But then I remembered how my ghost friends had everything in hand. Randy, Louis, Twyla, Scott . . .
A sense of aimlessness took me over, becoming as much a part of me as it had been in life. A spurt of bummerness consumed me as I walked out the pub door. At least I could enjoy having this body tonight.
Another One Bites the Dust Page 20